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Peaches- Fuck Motherfucker, It's Time For Fatherfucker

Author: Jonty Skrufff
Sunday, September 14, 2003
"Fatherfucker rolls off my tongue, because I'm not a Motherfucker, I'm a fatherfucker. Also, in relation to calling my album Fatherfucker, I went to a meeting with my label XL and they were like 'Peaches, you can't call you album Fatherfucker, we can't sell it at Walmart' and I was like 'Yeah, I don't want my record in Walmart'."

Sitting in the suite of her 5 star luxury London hotel, Peaches nibbles grapes as she outlines the logic behind calling her new album Fatherfucker. Partly to highly the ubiquity of Motherfucker ('you stub your toe and you say 'Motherfucker', you call you Mom 'Motherfucker', It doesn't mean anything any more') it's also intended as a deliberate gesture to the mainstream corporate system.

"When The Teaches Of Peaches came out I didn't have any ads in magazines or rotation on MTV in any country, I didn't have money to back it up- people found out about my first album for the love of music. And that's amazing today when it's all about media and money."

And what's equally amazing is how the 30 something Canadian has transformed herself from unknown school-teacher into a global alternative icon, feted as much by the fashion elite as by manufactured pop stars like Christine Aguilera and Britney, desperate for a slice of her cool.

"Britney Spears asking me to help her write her next album," she laughs, revealing she turned the prom queen down.

"But I did just collaborate with Pink, because there's something different about her. When she wrote to me and said she wanted to do a song with me I could feel that she really was a fan."

She's also fiercely proud of her own music, pointing out she makes it all entirely by herself.

"My image and persona is so large that people often forget I do all the music, they just think I'm a clown doing fucking karaoke," she told Jonty Skrufff.

"I find it strange that there's a lot of people who just perform and don't make their own music. That's fine too, but they'd better be dammed good performers."

Skrufff: When you started Fatherfucker did you begin with a specific theme-

Peaches: "No, I'm really not that calculated, even with the last album and actually when I finished the album I was like 'what am I going to call it-' Last time I came up with such a cool title because it was one of the lyrics and it was a good way to introduce myself and this time it was the same thing but it all came together organically. Which is what I'm about; I don't make songs that go together, rather I make beats and melodies, raps or phrases then put them altogether. I'll take a beat, then have a rap, put the two together and see what happens."

Skrufff: Your persona is. . .

Peaches: "It's quite large. Also, when I started making music there were three kinds of music that I wanted to fuse together; I thought about hip hop lyrics initially-when they're good they hit you hard, because of the way they phrase them so simply. I'm not a rapper but I always liked hip hop phrases but they were always directed towards women so I wanted to say mine in my own way, but with the same punch. The second music I liked was rock & roll and its attitude attitude, true punk was so energetic and there's been nothing like it since, just that fucking raw power energy, starting with Iggy Pop. And finally there was new electronic music by people like Autechre, arty stuff that I was listening to.

But when I'd see those electronic bands live they'd be totally knob twiddlers and I was like 'Man, why do people think if you make electronic music you shouldn't perform-' OK, it's artificial music, but why do you have to have no personality- I think that's wrong you can really bring life to this electronic music. That's why I wanted to perform and connect with an audience, but still in an electronic context."

Skrufff: Do you have any agenda beyond the music-

Peaches: "My first agenda is to make sure my music rocks and to make sure people like it because none of my a
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